Dude I'm Totally Married

For the record: I am not married. I have a boyfriend I love very much but we are not married. In recent weeks I have adopted this ‘party line’ to make it easier for me to deal with men who approach me when I’m out and about and it is a perfect reason why I can’t take them to Canada with me, or go for dinner with them, or give them my phone number etc etc. I’m not a liar and thus it has taken me several weeks to get better at repeating this storyline.

The amount of hassle I get greatly depends on where I am in Accra and within the country. Madina I found particularly bad for this type of thing. A two hour shopping trip resulted in many requests for me to either get them a Visa to Canada, send them a plane ticket to Canada, or simply for me to take them back to Canada with me. One man was so bold that when I told him I was taken he asked to see my ring! (that was a first)

The main road leading to Madina Market

Some shops in Madina - you can buy pretty much
anything here from food to cellphones to shoes
you name it - someone has it

Madina is a very busy place and it is a bit
disorienting. Be careful to not get hit by a car

This morning I know I was not in the greatest of moods and I was also quite late getting to work. A boy selling phone credit at Okpongolo Junction said Good morning to me and after I greeted him, he told me he loved me. I just kept walking, having a little laugh on the inside. I don’t think I had walked more than 500m before a guy about my age said “wait, come talk to me for a minute” I gave the usual song and dance that I was late for work (which I was) and that I couldn’t stay and chat. That didn’t deter him and instead of having a conversation I just came right out with “dude I’m totally married”. I repeated this twice before he got the hint and walked away. I mean, it is completely possible that he just wanted to have a friendly chat with me. This having been said, I feel like most times I do have a chat with men here, it ends with them asking me for my phone number or asking to date me or again, asking me to take them home with me.

Another morning adventure to work last week was equally amusing as a mate of a broken down tro tro on Madina Road flat out said “good morning, can I have your phone number” I of course said no to which he asked “can I give you my number? you call me?” Sometimes I really wonder if they do it just to mess with you. It’s pretty obvious you don’t belong (your skin colour might have been their first hint), and they know you will say no nine times out of ten. This does make me wonder if they get a kick out of ‘messing with the white girls’. 

On a more positive note, on one of my first solo missions to the Mall, I was having some trouble getting a tro tro home. I choose to go to the smaller platform instead of the main one because there are less people fighting to get into the cars. A boy around my age came up and asked me where I was going. He was really sweet and helped me get on the tro tro to Legon. He even paid for my fare (the equivalent of 20 cents), which he didn’t have to do. We parted ways at the roundabout on campus after he asked me (innocently enough) if I would go with him to eat fufu one evening. I told him no that I have a serious relationship back home and that Kevin wouldn’t be happy if I went for dinner with another man. Kevin found this whole encounter a bit amusing. I laughed really hard when he asked me “why did that guy pay for your tro tro?” - not a question I EVER expected to be asked!

Kevin & I Summer 2011

Sometimes though, men will just not get the hint as I discovered one afternoon I met up with some other Canadian volunteers for lunch. The guy would not leave us alone after inviting himself to sit at our table while we ate lunch. This young man couldn’t understand how he was being dishonest by saying he wanted to be friends when he wanted a whole lot more than that. At some point you have to be firm and basically say “get lost”. Being subtle or too nice (or ‘Canadian’ as my German friends say), doesn’t get you very far! I’m practicing being more firm - what an odd thing to have to practice.

It is a nice break to go places where you don’t stick out as much. I find wandering around campus is a perfect example of this. There are people from around the world who live on campus and by being a University campus, the number of non-student people who are there is pretty minimal.

One thing I was looking forward to was making local friends as a way to learn more about the culture and life here in Ghana. This is trickier than it sounds for several reasons. Firstly, women are less likely to come up to you and propose friendship (a quick survey of the foreign friends I’ve made have all said that they don’t have female Ghanian friends). Secondly, a lot of the time ‘friends’ doesn’t mean ‘friends’ the way we know it to be. Thirdly, no matter what  you do whether it’s learning the language or dressing Ghanian, you are always going to stick out to some degree. This is not to say that it’s impossible to make friends, however it does take longer than when you are making friends with foreigners. 

Don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate the fact that when I am going somewhere and I have the “I’m REALLY lost or confused” look on my face, someone will ask if I need help almost immediately. It’s truly wonderful and I greatly appreciate their assistance even if their directions are frequently wrong. You can make out pretty quickly what the person’s intentions are. Being friendly with people is good, just not too friendly.

As with pretty much everything in Ghana - patience is key.

Gasland & Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking

As countries around the world begin to explore alternative energy sources than petroleum, natural gas is of growing interest. I must admit I knew virtually nothing about how natural gas comes to be in tanks and canisters. I knew that companies are conducting exploration drilling in the Canadian Arctic to explore natural gas reserves. While mineral and energy extraction in the Arctic is an important issue unto itself, the main focus of my current interest is natural gas extraction in the United States and the implications of this for the rest of the world. This brings me to the documentary by Josh Fox called Gasland. This Oscar nominated documentary discusses the hazards of fracking in the United States and the politics behind this booming industry. The main focus of this film was water and the impact the fracking process and natural gas extraction has on the water supply. If you have read Bottlemania, or if you are interested in issues surrounding safe drinking water, you would probably enjoy this film.

Trailer to Gasland

What is fracking?
Fracking is a method used in deep well natural gas extraction. A combination of over 596 chemicals (80-300 tonnes each time), sand, and 1-8 millions of gallons of water is pumped into a well to break up the shale and ease the extraction of the natural gas. The water used becomes contaminated and of the water that is pumped out of the well, all of it is contaminated and must be cleaned and disposed of. During the lifetime of a natural gas well, it can be fracked multiple times (up to or beyond 10 times). These gas wells are drilled to 8000ft and most water aquifers are around 1000ft below the ground. The big concern is when the well casings leak or when water supplies are contaminated. This brief explanation is very over-simplified and there are great resources available on YouTube if you want to learn more about it.

What frightened me about this whole process beyond the safety issues of the wells and the potential for explosions was how the companies doing the drilling are not required by law to declare what chemicals they use for this process. Natural gas drilling companies are exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), which is in place to ensure that drinking water is kept clean from contamination. This exemption is commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole which was part of the Energy Bill passed in 2005 by the Bush administration. The Safe Drinking Water Act is in place to ensure that water resources are protected and not destroyed by industry or natural processes. While in some cases, citizens have been able to sue the gas companies and have them provide alternate water supplies (the gas companies will build a large tank and fill it up with water trucked in from elsewhere), however countless other families are left to fend for themselves.

Global Implications
How does this problem in the United States relate to international development? While current attention is focused on the fallout from fracking in the United States, other countries (including Europe and Northern Africa) are exploring fracking as a means to access natural gas reserves. If the United States is the model on which other natural gas drilling enterprises are mimicking, there is the potential for some serious problems. Clearly, there are health and safety issues surrounding natural gas extraction that have yet to be addressed and those with a vested interest in the operation of these drill sites are unwilling to take a critical look at the operation of these facilities. Hopefully before this technology is used in other parts of the world there will at least be independent study of some of these issues. Am I opposed to natural gas extraction? No. If natural gas companies were held to environmental standards and were able to prevent much of the water contamination that is currently happening, I don't see a problem in making use of this natural resource. However, while citizens of the United States can continue to set their water on fire, natural gas drilling is cause for concern.

Another great YouTube clip about Gasland

For more information about Josh Fox or Gasland please visit
website: http://www.gaslandthemovie.com
Facebook information: http://www.facebook.com/gaslandmovie